In Trinidad, East Indian indentees persisted in a centuries-old tradition of cannabis use from 1844 to the early 1900s, when the custom virtually disappeared. Use became endemic among young, Black, lower-class Trinidadians after 1969, as a result of stimulus diffusion from America. At present, an increasing number of young East Indians have become users. The decline of the earlier 'cannabis complex' and the emergence of its present-day form among East Indians are related to the development of this population in a model which makes manifest the articulation between culture, material conditions and forms of social organization. Historical research of island archives and anthropological research of a rural village and a middle-class suburb of the capital city will generate the basic data for the model.